Developing World
The international research-based pharmaceutical industry has from time to time been criticised, and indeed sometimes vilified, for its role in the developing world. The healthcare crisis in the developing world is of a truly frightening magnitude and everyone, including the pharmaceutical industry, has a responsibility to seek to enhance its contribution to tackling the crisis.
As noted by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
poverty and a lack of basic healthcare infrastructure to distribute medicines are the greatest barriers to access to medicines in the developing world. The truth is that with no viable health care infrastructure, the developing world is deprived of even rudimentary medical care. Other factors such as armed conflict, corruption, bureaucracy and simple prevention measures like condoms and mosquito nets, ensure that poor health is endemic for the world's poorest people.
95% of the medicines on the World Health Organisation (WHO) essential medicines list are off-patent. TB, malaria, polio and measles are killing thousands of people, yet the medicines to cure them are mostly out of patent and cheap.
The pharmaceutical industry has made available medicines, vaccines, equipment, health education and manpower worth $9.2 billion to the developing world since the United Nations announced its Millenium Development Goals in 2000.
Activities of pharmaceutical companies in the developing world cover a number of aspects such as improving access to medicines in developing countries, conducting research and development in diseases prevalent in developing countries, implementing health-related education and prevention programs.
Companies are undertaking these activities individually or, increasingly, in joint initiatives with partners from the public or the private sector. 'public private partnerships' have now become a feature of the global healthcare landscape. Bringing together important stakeholders and combining their unique expertise and capacities, public-private partnerships offer viable solution to complex and multifaceted health problems.
By way of example, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) – a partnership initiated by the pharmaceutical industry to develop new anti-malarial medicines – combines skills, expertise and resources of various public and private organisations and has developed the most extensive pipeline of drug candidates designed for the use in the context of developing countries.
Through partnerships, industry is building healthier societies in the developing world.
The pharmaceutical industry has consistently shown that it is willing to play its part, but it can only do so in co-operation with other partners - including UNICEF, UNAIDS, WHO, global organisations such as the World Bank and charities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the governments of individual countries and the private sector.
In view of the magnitude of the problem of ill health in developing countries, partnerships between all potential stakeholders, each providing its own expertise, are the best possible way to improve access to vital quality medicines.
Through public-private partnerships we can effectively fight diseases that perpetuate illness and premature deaths among poor people and gradually replace the destructive cycle of poverty and diseases with a virtuous cycle of investment and health.
Read the Partnerships to Build Healthier Societies in the Developing World booklet (2009 edition) for more information on the various industry public-private partnerships: